Fresco depicting Medea and her children (8977)

Fresco depicting Medea and her children (8977)

The fresco, painted in Fourth Style, depicts Medea as she is about to kill her children. The woman, who stands on the right in front of the colonnade of the house of Jason at Corinth, brings her hand to the hilt of the sword which is still in its scabbard, held in her left hand in a vertical position. She looks right, with a melancholic expression, towards the two boys who are playing knuckle bones around a quadrangular base, supervised by a pedagogue who stands in front of a door. The attention of the viewer is captured almost entirely by Medea’s eyes and gaze which clearly reflect the mixture of tension and sadness at what she is about to do. Pliny (Naturalis Historia, XXXV, 136) tells us that the theme, known from other copies, of which three are kept in the Archaeological Museum of Naples (inventory numbers. 8976, 111440 and 114321) is taken from a famous fresco by Timomachos of Byzantium.